On Mar 11, 2005, at 3:53 PM, John Howell wrote:
American Popular Song did not grow up in the large, East-Coast seaport cities, which maintained close ties to Europe and European culture from the late 18th century on, but in the North American heartland where successive waves of pioneers settled, each bringing its own ethnic background and culture. That culture included folksongs and hymns from many traditions, and songwriters kept writing new songs about current events in the older styles. Those styles were very much based on easy-to-learn-and-remember melodies (often incorporating repetition), vocal ranges limited enough to be sung by anyone, and simple chordal accompaniment rather than complex polyphony.
This argument confuses folk music (largely anonymous and non-professional) with popular music (professional, with identifiable composers). The association of the latter with cities is clear at every step--and, I might add, in every culture. The earliest American *popular* songs were written and published in NYC, Philadelphia, etc. Through most of the nineteenth century (from ~1830), these songs were created in the context of minstrel shows, which did indeed tour widely, but had their economic and cultural foundations in the cities. Stephen Foster was from Pittsburgh. Henry Clay Work was from Chicago, and lived in Boston, Phila., NYC. They are not exceptions.
To make a living from their works, popular composers from the pre-recording era had to go where the money, the pianos, and the parlors were. Guess where that was.
Essentially this formed the background, in the first half of the 19th century, for the brand new "music of the people" which emerged in the second half, having been essentially protected from the influence of European art music during that gestation period.
All popular music, from anywhere, at any time, is *by definition* music of the people (that's what "popular" means). You cannot seriously assert that there was no American popular music before ~1850, and therefore a "music of the people" cannot have emerged *ab ovo* after that time.
As for a supposed insulation from European art music (as opposed, I guess, to American art music or European popular music), see Ch. 4 of Charles Hamm's _Yesterdays_ for the great popularity of Italian opera in the US in the early 19th c.
Hamm's book is the basic text on early American popular music, and it contradicts your highly romanticized interpretation at every turn.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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